The Endless Summer

The Endless Summer, October 16th, 2021

When I was a teenager in Lincoln, Nebraska a movie came out about some surfers who travelled the world looking for the perfect wave. The movie was called “The Endless Summer.”

These two California dudes, one blonde one brunette, travelled to every continent surfing the waves. It was a good movie. Very 1960’s.

I had the poster from the movie in my bedroom there on South 37th Street. I wanted that endless summer. The winters in Nebraska are brutally boring. It’s all snow, wind, gray skies, brown land. Then slush and mud when the temperature gets above freezing.

Oh, to surf forever in that endless summer….

…..

Now it is 50+ years later and I’m living in Healdsburg, Sonoma County, California. The beach and surf are 45 minutes away. Not that I’ve seen them in years. Covid ya know. Nowhere to pee on the way. Gotta pee nowadays.

The summers do appear endless here though. The rains quit last May and except for two little storms going by a few weeks ago, haven’t returned. The watering hose and watering can are our constant gardening companions.

But tonight on the KPIX Channel 5 TV News from San Francisco at 11 PM, the weatherman promised us that tomorrow (today, Saturday) would be the last warm day of summer. It will be 88 F in Healdsburg tomorrow (Saturday) and then the endless summer ends.
Cool weather and rain perhaps will come to town on Sunday and not leave for awhile. Maybe until next Spring. Who knows? But the long hot dry summer is finally over.

So what to do on the last hot day of an endless summer? BBQ some burgers? Sit in the sun and soak up the heat while we can? Water the garden one last time?

Perhaps just sit on the concrete front porch steps in late afternoon absorbing the stored heat in the concrete through my ass with beer in hand.

Good-bye endless summer.

TJM